The present invention relates to a digital video system (apparatus and method) capable of real-time recording, and an information recording medium (recordable optical disc) used in this system.
In recent years, systems for playing back the contents of optical discs such as video CDs that record video data, audio data, and the like have been developed, and have prevailed for the purpose of playing back movie software titles, karaoke data, and the like.
Among such systems, a DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) standard that uses MPEG2 (Moving Picture Experts Group 2) international standards has been proposed.
This standard supports MPEG2 as a moving picture compression scheme, and AC-3 audio, MPEG audio, and the like as audio schemes. The standard is appended with sub-picture data for superimposed dialogs and menus obtained by compressing bitmap data, and control data (navigation data) for special playback control. Furthermore, this standard supports the UDF (Universal Disc Format) Bridge (a hybrid of UDF and ISO9660) to allow a computer to read data.
Also, optical discs such as a DVD-RAM and the like on which digital data can be written or rewritten have been developed. A function that allows one to easily edit the recorded contents is required of a digital video system using such DVD-RAM or the like.
However, a home-use digital video system which allows end-users to easily edit the recorded contents has not become available yet.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a digital video system (apparatus and method) which allows easy and flexible editing.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an information recording medium (recordable optical disc) which allows efficient data management, and can manage save units finely.
In order to achieve the above objects, the digital video system of the present invention uses a data area for storing file data containing digital movie information recorded in a predetermined recording unit; and a management area for storing navigation data for managing information stored in the data area. In this system the management area includes a storage field for storing an erasion level flag which sets a specific recording unit in the data area in a temporarily erased state.